How come Final Cut runs on a MacBook Air?

Recently I watched a Youtuber showing how he edited a vlog in Final Cut X on a MacBook Air. It slowed down only in the final rendering. The interface though was responsive all the time.

When I look into the hardware needed for DaVinci Resolve I see the expensive graphic cards and CPU. Why such a large difference?

much easier for FCPX to optimise for one OS and limited hardware configs. Resolve has far more to deal with.

It's also much newer app with modern design and coding. Resolve core may be still from the past. They keep patching it, but this is not the same as having one written recently. As Tom said it's also way easier when you do it for single OS and have limited hardware configs.

Another 32 bit floating topic ahead...

FCPX uses 32bit float so this is irrelevant.

I think the argument that the highest fidelity is needed for color grading is valid, but Resolve is now much more than grading alone. For editing speed and accuracy are much more important to the task, which is why we routinely drop scrubbing quality in order to be able to edit smoothly and stop your playhead on a specific frame. So if Blackmagic needs to lower image fidelity to get speed up to FCPX standards, they should probably work on doing that for the edit page alone, and maintain quality standards for the color page.

In fact I'd be surprised if they weren't working on exactly that given the speed Resolve is updated.

It really is one of the most incredible and useful pieces of software around now.

Their are many ways of getting by with a lower powered machine.

Recently I watched a Youtuber showing how he edited a vlog in Final Cut X on a MacBook Air. It slowed down only in the final rendering. The interface though was responsive all the time.

When I look into the hardware needed for DaVinci Resolve I see the expensive graphic cards and CPU. Why such a large difference?

He could have done the same thing with Resolve. Like FCPX, it will run on almost anything... just not well. Minimum specs don't refer to the hardware requirements needed to run software, rather, they refer to the hardware requirements needed to provide a good user experience.
Resolve is professional software and it's target user expects a certain level of performance and reliability while working on demanding projects. In other words, when BMD was specifying the minimum requirements to have a good experience in Resolve, they weren't thinking vloggers, they were thinking feature film editors and colorists.
FCPX, on the other hand, is more accurately described as "prosumer". You can do professional work on it, depending on the work, but it's really designed with consumers and prosumers in mind- people who aren't working on very technically demanding projects. Because the target user aren't as high, neither are the hardware requirements.

I think the argument that the highest fidelity is needed for color grading is valid, but Resolve is now much more than grading alone. For editing speed and accuracy are much more important to the task, which is why we routinely drop scrubbing quality in order to be able to edit smoothly and stop your playhead on a specific frame. So if Blackmagic needs to lower image fidelity to get speed up to FCPX standards, they should probably work on doing that for the edit page alone, and maintain quality standards for the color page.

In fact I'd be surprised if they weren't working on exactly that given the speed Resolve is updated.

It really is one of the most incredible and useful pieces of software around now.

Resolve already does it behind the scenes. All performance settings have been moved to main preferences where people sometimes don't even look.
Seen many comments from "famous yotubers" that Resolve plays files in realtime at full quality, but eg. in Premiere they need to switch to 1/2 resolution etc. to get same performance. Sometime Resolve is better, but sometimes it's not the case at all. Resolve uses half resolution decoding, simpler scaling etc constantly, but it's all automatic now (people even have no idea about it). It was more obvious when it was under top menu and more manual.
Just go to main Preference/User/Playback Settings and set Performance Mode to "Disable".
Example BRAW file plays at 60fps on my Macbook Pro by default, but with performance mode disabled can't even hit 30fps.
FCP X is new and well written. Another example of such a well optimised tool is Edius. It's not the newest engine, but comes from team of very good programmers.

You should be using the system that best fits your needs, sure FCPX might work an a macbook air, and only slow down at a particular point, where as a different app might work better on your device.

FCPX is only Mac based, where as Resolve runs on 3 operating systems, you might be able to source a wonderful set of hardware devices that runs in Win10 that exceed the specs of a mac for a lot less than a replacement mac...DR16 is running fine on my High Sierra partition, on a 5 year old 8GB macbook pro device...Not sure for how long FCPX will though...

I'm running Resolve 16 just for testing on a stock 2018 MacBook Pro, and it's fine with ProRes 444 HD material. But I'm not running 4 simultaneous streams or doing any real color on it.

Wow. I am overwhelmed by the amount of replies.

I should have added a disclaimer: I really like Resolve. I am no professional videographer but it sped up the production of my video tutorials a lot.

Mine was only a curiosity. I still am using version 15. What should I change in the preferences to improve performance?

Inviato dal mio Nexus 6P utilizzando Tapatalk

Nothing- default setting is already set to best performance.
You can only make it worse

I used to be a great fan of the idea behind final cut studio, that is final cut pro 6 and 7, then waited for an update, when FCPX was released it was what is this dog-pooh Apple dropped on innocent laptops??

After a while I grew to understand the power of FCPX, the magnetic timeline, the way you can hide rejected clips, the keyword collections..but the hardware, borderline scam by Apple to force you to buy the most expensive, and then it is not the most powerful or effective device on the market...

What I did not like about Resolve was the v1 v2 v3 etc a1 a2 a3 stacking, "pancaking" of tracks, I felt this was too much an 8bit idea, long left behind, like we do our toys from toddlerhood...

But now I am no longer a great fan of Apple, it has a place, much like Avid has, and I am so not a fan of software rental, and again PPro is a pancake NLE.... But I can forgive the pancake timeline for what DR16 is, it is fingers crossed a bridge to a brave new world of pancake-less tracks, which makes editing so much more effective.

Once all the bugs and such are coded out of DR16, it will make Resolve for me the NLE I turn to, it just makes more sense, instead of roundtripping, and XML, as well as not having to deal with stupid ideas Apple love..Resolve seems to be the path of better returns.

That and the fact it matters not if you are win10 or Mac, or linux, you have a standard pretty much going forward, and for the future, it is almost a no-brainer to switch to Resolve...which will work on pretty much any laptop after 2013...DR16 is fine on my 6 year old mac laptop...

I wish I was not finding I have to change NLE, but Apple is making it harder and harder to justify the expense, I could set up a fleet of laptops for a fraction of the cost of a single fully spec'ed out Mac laptop/desktop, something that idiot running Apple has lost sight of...It is not about the final price, but volume...In time I might be able to afford to buy BMD hardware, stay on the mac route, no way....

You should be using the system that best fits your needs, sure FCPX might work an a macbook air, and only slow down at a particular point, where as a different app might work better on your device.

Does not compute.

On Windows platform, you will see similar results comparing Edius Pro to Resolve, or even VEGAS Pro in some instances. There are a couple of other windows-only NLEs that perform very well at the lower end of the spec chart (and I'm not talking about consumer software like PowerDirector or Pinnacle).

Resolve has very high system requirements. this makes it pretty bad for laptop editing for most people, because you are going to be paying a decent penny for a Windows Laptop with a 6GB+ dGPU and Battery Life/Screen/form factor comparable to a MacBook Air or Pro.

At that point, is it even worth using Resolve at all - and potentially switching platforms to save on "hardware," when you can just get lower-mid range MBP and it will edit almost everything you need in FCPX? And for people doing 1080p they don't even need better than a MBA... FCPX will fly with that kind of media on iMacs and MacBooks as old as Mid-Late 2013 - machines that Resolve pretty much won't run on.

Nothing runs better than FCPX on Macs, and almost nothing runs better than Edius on Windows - so unless you're using those NLEs; there is always something that will run better on your machine (for editing).

I also don't think being cross platform is a legit rationale. Resolve was designed to run on workstations, so the assumptions that the developers made when architecting the software is the complete opposite from what Canopus and Apple did with their NLEs.

The biggest benefit to being on a single platform I that you can design more strictly around the OS' native APIs and subsystems, which can improve performance and efficiency... and you don't have to use toolkits like Qt for UI (which I almost always find feels a bit sluggish to me, when used for large applications).

Recently I watched a Youtuber showing how he edited a vlog in Final Cut X on a MacBook Air. It slowed down only in the final rendering. The interface though was responsive all the time.

When I look into the hardware needed for DaVinci Resolve I see the expensive graphic cards and CPU. Why such a large difference?

He could have done the same thing with Resolve. Like FCPX, it will run on almost anything... just not well. Minimum specs don't refer to the hardware requirements needed to run software, rather, they refer to the hardware requirements needed to provide a good user experience.
Resolve is professional software and it's target user expects a certain level of performance and reliability while working on demanding projects. In other words, when BMD was specifying the minimum requirements to have a good experience in Resolve, they weren't thinking vloggers, they were thinking feature film editors and colorists.
FCPX, on the other hand, is more accurately described as "prosumer". You can do professional work on it, depending on the work, but it's really designed with consumers and prosumers in mind- people who aren't working on very technically demanding projects. Because the target user aren't as high, neither are the hardware requirements.

On an iMac with 8GB RAM and iGPU, Resolve [15] complains about VRAM about 20 seconds after opening a timeline - and that's pretty much a "Go straight to jail" card, before even putting an effect on the clip, touching the color or fusion pages, etc.

Resolve is unusable on those lower end spec packages. He couldn't just do that, unless he speced up his MBA (which doesn't make sense, since you can just get a MBP), but the performance isn't going to be nearly as good as FCPX due to the lower-end CPU and GPU in those machines.

Resolve is very aggressive with how it uses the GPU/VRAM, and that's generally what bottlenecks lower end machines. It would be frustrating to use on a MBA - all the way down to unusable (with [near]-base configurations).

It would be frustrating to use on a MBA - all the way down to unusable (with [near]-base configurations).

Based on what? the OP gave no indication of what resolution or codec he is working with.

It would be frustrating to use on a MBA - all the way down to unusable (with [near]-base configurations).

Based on what? the OP gave no indication of what resolution or codec he is working with.

Based on math.

1. People run into all sorts of performance issues with 4GB GTX1050[Ti] dGPUs (and even 1060 for 4K) in eSports gaming laptops. Intel UHD 617 isn't going to even approach the type of performance you can get out of that card. The UHD 617 is basically a worse iGPU than the UHD 630.
2. MBA has no dGPU option.
3. LPDDR3 RAM
4. Max 16GB RAM
5. Dual Core CPUs, Thermally Limited. Only i5 in the newer models (No Hyperthreading).
6. My Quad Core iMac is still faster than the newest MBAs...

7. Based on me running multiple NLEs on the types of systems I mentioned to test this, using the ProRes 422 media from the "The Definitive Guide to DiVinci Resolve" media download file (interview.mov, etc.) I still have those systems, but doing it again would be a waste of time. Results would be the same.

If I'm going to be honest, the competitors look even stronger when you rule out H.264, which can be glitchy or problematic even with Acceleration.

Type of media isn't a consideration, and not using H.264 is a pretty basic thing to do since people using Free Resolve won't get HW Decoding, while most other commercial NLEs (Professional and Consumer) will default to this for that type of media. I use ProRes as a baseline - and I used BMD's footage to be "neutral."

Resolve is unworkable on those types of systems regardless of what type of media you hand it, and its system requirements have more to do with its architecture as a finishing platform than the specs on those machines. That came with certain tradeoffs, and Resolve was designed initially as, basically, workstation software... so they could ignore systems that low down the totem pole.

This typically results in software that scales up amazingly well, but doesn't scale down to lower end systems at all. Such systems were not consideration when the software was being designed. They absolutely were for a lot of other NLEs that made a play for market share in the no-professional niches, since you can't sell software if the software doesn't perform adequately on consumer systems...

Maybe I missed something whilst watching the DR16 presentation online at NAB 2019, the impression I got from the stream was that DR16 and the cut page would be the go to tool for vloggers, broadcasters using laptops, after all, the cut page was formatted to work on laptops..

This is one thing I am pretty sure is going to happen, like a rise in the costs of petrol, and bread... Blackmagic will move mountains, oceans, planets to ensure DR16 works on laptops...It might mean a 3rd version, DR16 lite that handles only a certain narrow range of codecs, and a fixed number of stacked layers [v1 v2 v3 a1 a2 a3 etc]...

In fact the more I think about it, the more that solution makes sense with the cut page, a lite version of DR16, that is not a system hog...DR16 works on my 8GB RAM 2013 retina macbook pro...my laptop is not the far from being on the obsolete list...and it runs DR16...a laptop...that cannot be upgraded..

Hell..if BMD asked $199 for a lite version that run the cut page, the edit page, 20 video/audio layers, etc, I would have the ol credit card out and paying 2 min after the product went live...I don't mind paying $199 for DR16....I welcome it...Free is great, paying for something I know will have excellent back up is better..

A solution needs to be found, and will be found, so that the vloggers on older mac laptops, windoze laptops editing in cafe's as per the presentation can in fact produce...You cannot trust gravity, or the post office, but you can trust BMD to deliver in some way what they promise....

[Rohit Gupta]

Recently I watched a Youtuber showing how he edited a vlog in Final Cut X on a MacBook Air. It slowed down only in the final rendering. The interface though was responsive all the time.

When I look into the hardware needed for DaVinci Resolve I see the expensive graphic cards and CPU. Why such a large difference?

I have the 2018 13-inch retina Macbook Air, and it works for editing h264/h265 media, and even ProRes until the CPU runs outs of compute power. For example, 4K/30 for h264/h265 works just fine, etc. Of course, I would not expect to run some of the very heavy algorithms like temporal NR or the new SpeedWarp on this GPU.

Nor do I expect my 2006 3 cylinder 800cc 5 door sedan to carry 6 folks 2000 miles in the middle of winter...you buy/rent what you need for a job, or you make a plan...The stupid argument it does not do x or y is pointless...

Yes Final Cut runs on an MB Air, it might even run on a windoze machine, or an ipad...but should it??

If you are going to use a laptop for editing the next Bond movie...maybe not, for the next Bond parody, sure why not....

DR16 might change in the future, it might not, FCPX will not change, it will require more and more resources and sadly Apple are not indicating any plans to have a happy marriage of portable hardware and software... The previous generation of FC was limited to 2GB RAM per application, product of it being 32bit...we are now 64bit, and the limit of 2GB RAM per app no longer applies..

This of course screws the pooch on available on board system RAM and applications, and we are heading into 8K/10K and beyond, massive file sizes, extreme system requirements, maybe a couple of Cray computers just to launch FCP in the next couple of updates!!

The point is youm can only do what you can do, within the budget you have...And for me it is rapidly changing from being Apple based to BMD based, as I can afford to purchase a fleet of decent windozey machines for the cost of a single imac/mac pro system...

DR16 is a great new idea, with a few well mentioned flaws in beta v1, fingers crossed v2 is massive...cannot wait...no really so excited about DR16..much more than I have been for any DR iteration previous...Not sure why, but the cut page seems to be the key, a way in for newbies, and let's not forget we are not all 20 yr veterans...

DR16 might change in the future, it might not, FCPX will not change, it will require more and more resources and sadly Apple are not indicating any plans to have a happy marriage of portable hardware and software... The previous generation of FC was limited to 2GB RAM per application, product of it being 32bit...we are now 64bit, and the limit of 2GB RAM per app no longer applies..

The rate at which FCPX's requirements are rising is slower than the rate at which Resolve's system requiremets are rising. This means that it will always have this advantage, unless Apple introduces some serious under the hood changes that skyrockets the system requirements up.

Same for Premiere Pro. It's 2019, and Adobe have only just moved to 16GB RAM Requirements, and the NLE still runs fine on 8GB.

Apple has indicated their plans to have a happy marriage between portable hardware and software by outperforming literally every competitor on their lowest-end laptop - easily.

Not sure why, but the cut page seems to be the key, a way in for newbies, and let's not forget we are not all 20 yr veterans...

Cut Page is a slightly frustrating-to-use replacement for consumer NLEs (with the benefit of being compatible with Professional CODECs - though HQX and Cineform are easy to add on Windows and macOS, and will just work anywhere once added), which are dime a dozen on Windows and perform excellently even on lower end machines.

Newbies don't need the Cut Page. They are already saturated with a dozen+ very viable offerings for their uses. The only reason to use Resolve and put up with its Requirements and Performance on that type of hardware is for more "heavy duty" or "specialized' uses. Otherwise, why bother?

You're paying more for the software, and much more for the hardware... for what gains?

I don't see a point in installing Resolve if all you're going to do is sit on the Cut Page. I see very little reason for a user like that to even consider it, when they can probably get their work done in iMovie, if we are being frank.

This is why BMD was quite deliberate with their word choice when they announced this new page, regarding the markets they are targeting with it. The lower-market folk do seem insistent at forcing it as the most viable option there, due to the price tag of "Free[mium]." If you're going to target the lower end, newbie crowd... then it probably would have been better to just develop it as its own separate application, in that case.

P.S. What makes your "argument" (interesting way to describe an opposing point of view... painting it as inherently negative to set up your straw man) any less "stupid" than any other? Interesting way to lead off a reply...

I apologize for necro'ing this old post, but I'm somewhat confused. Davinci Resolve 15 runs fine on my Macbook Air. Despite not having an OpenCL or CUDA dedicated GPU, the application runs quite well. I just exported a lightly edited 1080p 30fps video downscaled to 720p a little faster than realtime. Somewhat suspiciously, that was nearly the same performance I got from iMovie. Indeed when I examined system processes in Activity Monitor, they both appeared to invoke the same encoding and decoding processes.

So in short, if you have a Macbook Air give a try. Keep in mind that mine is a higher specced Macbook (2017 model with 2.2GHz i7, 8GB RAM and 512GB SSD) but it might run well on older and lesser Airs. I wouldn't try editing 4K footage, though.

Thank you. I have a slower CPU. But I have 32gb of RAM. With an Nvidia 1050 4gb there is still some esitation when editing. I am on windows 10

Inviato dal mio CLT-L09 utilizzando Tapatalk

I apologize for necro'ing this old post, but I'm somewhat confused. Davinci Resolve 15 runs fine on my Macbook Air. Despite not having an OpenCL or CUDA dedicated GPU, the application runs quite well. I just exported a lightly edited 1080p 30fps video downscaled to 720p a little faster than realtime.

If you look at the DaVinci Resolve Configuration Guide, you'll notice that they even say the lowly MackBook (not Air, not Pro) will run Resolve for light editing and reviewing footage in the field. Heck, I have a Microsoft Surface tablet that I use for the same purpose; Resolve works fine on it with 1080p footage for reviewing my shots and adding metadata in the field.

It all comes down to what you need from Resolve. If you're using it only for basic editing and limited color correction, and not Fusion or multi-node grades with noise reduction etc., or if you're using it as a free DAW for audio only in Fairlight (some people actually do that), you can get by with a machine that's way under the specs in the Configuration Guide.

But the Configuration Guide largely assumes you're planning to use everything Resolve's got and want a machine that can handle whatever footage your clients will be sending your way.

Since Resolve has a free version, it's easy enough for anyone to test it on their machine to see if it plays well with their footage.

Please don't attack my comment, just read it, the post requires no comments at all, it is just my thoughts, I am not attacking anyone here, I think all comments should be respected as valuable, and in fact I feel that any post should be protected and personal attacks left off the body of the post and if you feel anyone is over the line, report that user to a moderator.

Here is my thoughts for the dev team, I love the idea of the cut page, I love the new concept, and I can see value in it.

A while back Apple brought out a new version of Final Cut, they called it Final Cut Express, and it was a stripped down version of Final Cut Pro 6, this express lacked the live scopes and a few other features, it was 90% of a full version, which was great as it was a step up from imovie to final cut pro, a transition application if you want.

My idea, and please it does not need to be picked apart, nor the poster abused, my idea is that DR16 comes in 2 versions, an express version, and a full studio version, for example in the light version, you are limited to certain features, drop the edit page, enhance features within the cut page, a more stripped version of fairlight, maybe no fusion, a grade page, and a deliver page.

The idea is for the app to work across the widest range of products, under a range of situations, aimed at the market that uses editing/light grading/audio mixing in the wild, filmmakers, journalists,broadcasters,youtubers, schools.

The idea is that the app is a stepping stone that can be used on older cheaper devices, that opens the concept to as many folks as possible, I see no reason why this should not be a great app.

Having 2 near identical apps is a bit of an issue, the idea of a "free" lightweight app that works on older machines, and a more powerful app that requires GPU's and such, for which you purchase a licence.

Again I ask could you refrain from personal insults, this is just my thoughts about a brand new concept and personal attacks are just silly and juvenile,

I would love to have an app that does what I need, and when the time comes, and I can upgrade, I have the app to do it with, a simple editor that does audio/grading/delivery in various codecs or formats, that does not require the purchase of a $5000 laptop makes sense...Fingers crossed this is not attacked!!!

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I would love to have an app that does what I need, and when the time comes, and I can upgrade, I have the app to do it with, a simple editor that does audio/grading/delivery in various codecs or formats, that does not require the purchase of a $5000 laptop makes sense...Fingers crossed this is not attacked!!!

Get yourself Edius. For simple editing and delivery it's very good choice and it will run well on laptops with Intel GPU.

...

I would love to have an app that does what I need, and when the time comes, and I can upgrade, I have the app to do it with, a simple editor that does audio/grading/delivery in various codecs or formats, that does not require the purchase of a $5000 laptop makes sense...Fingers crossed this is not attacked!!!

Get yourself Edius. For simple editing and delivery it's very good choice and it will run well on laptops with Intel GPU.

Hitfilm might work well too. I must say I'm surprised by the anti Apple/FCPX position as I find it the most responsive of ALL editing apps out there, regardless of OS, and I have never had to pay for an upgrade! I still use FCPX and Resolve depending upon the job at hand as neither will do everything I need.

Justine said: "Yes Final Cut runs on an MB Air, it might even run on a windoze machine, or an ipad...but should it??"
FCPX will NOT run on a Windows machine. That's a VERY strange comment unless you meant a Hackintosh install.

[Tony Rivera]

This thread is a bit old and we see people have added content to it however, we will state that the posts adding to it will need to remain on topic. If you would like to add suggestions that have to do with the OP, that is fine but lets not waiver from that.